Amid lockdown measures nursing home infections, deaths surge in US

Recent outbreaks in Tennessee, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland pushed the death toll at nation’s nursing homes to at least 450

A residents from St. Joseph's Senior Home is loaded into a bus in Woodbridge, N.J., Wednesday, March 25, 2020. More than 90 residents of the nursing home in Woodbridge are being transferred to a facility in Whippany after 24 tested positive for COVID-19, according to a spokeswoman for CareOne, which operates the Whippany facility. The facility has moved its residents to other facilities to accommodate the new arrivals. (AP Photo)

New Jersey: Nursing homes across the country have been in lockdown for weeks under federal orders to protect their frail, elderly residents from coronavirus, but a wave of deadly outbreaks nearly every day since suggests that the measures including a ban on visits and daily health screenings of staffers either came too late or were not rigorous enough.

Recent outbreaks in Tennessee, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland have pushed the death toll at the nation’s nursing homes to at least 450 and highlight the biggest gap: Screenings of doctors, nurses, aides and other workers do not involve actual testing but the taking of temperatures or asking health questions that still allow infected, asymptomatic people to slip through.

“It’s still been like Swiss cheese with people coming in and out of there, and thus you’ve got these explosions in senior facilities,” said John BaRoss of Long Valley, New Jersey, who recently pulled his 85-year-old mother out of an assisted-living center out of fear of infection.

After an outbreak of 100 infections and four deaths at the Gallatin Center for Rehabilitation and Healing outside Nashville, Tennessee where the National Guard was called in to help evacuate the facility Sumner County Mayor Anthony Holt blamed staff members who came to work despite showing symptoms for COVID-19 and “exposed a lot of patients.”

“Things got out of hand,” Holt told the Associated Press. “Once employees became symptomatic, they should have asked them to go home immediately and called the health department. I don’t think that occurred.”

After an outbreak near Dayton, Ohio, killed six people and infected nearly 50 at a pair of nursing homes less than 10 miles apart, health officials began scrutinizing medical specialists such as phlebotomists and respiratory therapists who work in multiple facilities a day. One such health worker who visited both homes tested positive for COVID-19.